


Don't Go to the Netherworld!

by w_k_smith



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual main character, Beetlejuice and Lydia are siblings they just don't know it yet, Bisexual main character, Body Horror, Demons, Gen, Ghosts, Gratuitous Tim Burton References, Gratuitous puns, Suicide, beetlebabes dni obv, the afterlife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24814201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_k_smith/pseuds/w_k_smith
Summary: Beetlejuice - half-ghost, half-demon - has spent his entire afterlife in the Netherworld and works as the beleaguered assistant to Juno, his demonic bureaucrat mother. He thinks he’ll be stuck and miserable until doomsday, then a living girl breaks into the Netherworld in search of her dead mom. Beetlejuice promises to help Lydia Deetz, so long as she summons him to the living world once they’re done. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of goths and ghosts often go downhill toward sandworms, dead boy bands, family drama, and worst of all, introspection.It’s showtime!
Relationships: Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz
Comments: 61
Kudos: 104





	1. "It's a Wonderful Afterlife"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A living person comes to the Netherworld, and Beetlejuice meets his new best friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning: This story contains depictions of, references to, and discussion of topics like suicide, untimely death, abuse, and body horror - you know, like the musical does (though this probably has more). Know your boundaries, and stay safe.

He was so _relieved_ when the red alert exploded through the office, making every demon caseworker jump. He’d spent the past few hours cutting up the files Juno had given him into paper dolls, but even yards upon yards of multiheaded creatures got boring after a while. He magicked the dolls into running out of Juno’s office into the caseworker bullpen, and when that got no reaction, he’d made the dolls stand in crude positions and then cannibalize each other, but even that barely got a few snarls of “ _Get back to your own work, Beetlejuice_.”

But red alerts were like fire alarms. Not only did they break up the day, but you also got to look at a fire.

“What asshole let the living person in?” he yelled, walking out of Juno’s office. He got his own too-small desk in a little reception area in front of her inner office. Officially, he was the Assistant to the Director of Netherworld Customs and Processing, but he was a glorified secretary. Most of his days were spent spinning his wheels or making the whiners who came to see Juno sit and wait until they gave up and went away.

He guessed his position as Juno’s half-demon assistant should have felt like a privilege, if he didn’t otherwise hate every aspect of the Netherworld. He got a desk and walls, while the full-demon caseworkers crammed their knife-fingers, pumpkin heads, flippers, and musty burlap bodies filled with bugs into an open-plan workspace. And the dead people who hung around had to make themselves busy wherever they found the space.

Right now everybody, demon and human alike, had scattered

“Out of the _way_ , Beetlejuice!” the receptionist snapped, sprinting by in the high heels she’d died in, making them her only footwear from now until doomsday. She’d had another name once, but the MISS ARGENTINA sash across her torso had become a nametag a long time ago.

“Yeah, Miss A, better get to ’em before Juno does!” he said, yanking up his sagging pants.

“Care to help?” she snapped before rounding the corner.

He didn’t bother to respond. She’d asked knowing the answer would be “no.” Even if he thought it would make a difference, why should he? Sure, the living didn’t know crossing into the Netherworld meant they’d be chased down and probably killed by a screechy demon with a neck slit and horrible fashion sense. But hey. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

He didn’t see Juno around. Not yet, anyway. He was sure he’d hear her, once things went south for the trespasser.

Someone he didn’t recognize crept around the corner Miss Argentina hadn’t turned. The living girl stuck out like a raw steak at a vegan salad bar. Her face was flushed, and sweat glued her bangs to her forehead. Geez, he missed sweating. She walked without the weight of the underworld on her shoulders. And she was goth, with a dyed black bob, a black dress, and chunky black boots – very overdressed. Most of the recently deceased turned up in hospital gowns, sweatpants, Greek life t-shirts, or, best/worst, nothing at all. Few had the right combination of luck and irony to die in funeral garb.

He ducked behind a pillar in the bullpen before the living girl saw him. She licked her lips, looked left and right and left again, obviously no plan in mind…

And she ran into Juno’s office.

Oh. Oh oh _oh_ this was just _too_ good. Today was not going to be boring. Today might be his luckiest day of all.

He strode to Juno’s office door, walked through, and slammed it shut behind him.

“Do you have a death wish?” he asked the kid.

He was aware of the effect he had on living people…and a lot of dead people…and anyone and anything with even the memory of a digestive system. Today his hair was a dark green that verged on purple, his moss and stubble blended together nicely, and the caterpillar behind his right ear was busy spinning a cocoon.

The kid didn’t act freaked out or disgusted. She straightened her shoulders and said: “You have to hide me.”

He leaned against the door. “Do my ears deceive me?” He pulled his left ear out to arm’s length, and let it snap back like a rubber band. “Or is the girl running for her life making demands?”

“I came here for my mom. I can’t leave until I find her.”

“She isn’t here, Siouxsie Sioux. You’re the first living person who’s snuck in for the past decade.”

“My mom is dead. She died a few months ago. I _have_ to find her, and bring her home. Well, to Connecticut, because my dad made us move to Connecticut, but then when he sees her, he’ll snap out of it, and we’ll go back to our actual home!” Desperation, denial. Maybe she _was_ prepared to blend in with the newlydeads.

“Lemme get this straight – you, still alive and kicking, jumped into _hell_ to find someone who has been dead for a _while_ and bring them home with you? And you thought you could just do that? That this kind of violation of the natural order wasn’t going to rain down all kinds of shitfire and brimstone?”

“I knew there might be trouble.” She set her jaw. “I just didn’t care.”

He grinned. “Ah. Moxie. You’re pretty luck you decided to hide in my office.” He floated over his desk, crossed his legs, and pressed his fingers together. “I have a proposition. _Quid pro quo_ , if you will.”

The kid gave him an extremely skeptical look. “You want me to make a deal with a demon?”

“ _Half_ demon, and what I’m asking for is a favor. Just a little, bitty thing.” He held his fingers a millimeter apart. “I’ll hide you. Keep the heat off. Distract the fuzz and frame your dog for eating your homework and tell the collection agents you aren’t home. And then, when you get back to the world of the living…you’ll say my name. Three times.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’ll…what?”

“It’ll summon me. So I can be a part of the living world! At least for a while. And not be stuck in this trash fire.” He grimaced. “No, that’s not fair. Sometimes trash fires are fun. I should know; I’ve set a lot of them.”

Her frown deepened. “I don’t know…”

“ _Beetlejuice_!” came a familiar roar. “Get out here _right now_!”

“Under the desk!” he told the kid, jumping to his feet.

“Don’t talk to me like –!”

“UNDER THE DESK!” he roared, drawing himself up a few extra feet, and opening his mouth to show multiple rows of teeth.

That did the trick. The kid dove under the desk, and he was glad her dress was black, because it blended in with the shadows and the dark stone of the floor.

Juno opened the door a second later, smoke and steam trickling from her neck slit. Her beehive quivered. Per usual, her red skirtsuit hung off her like loose skin, and she was pushing the walker she didn’t need ahead of her.

“Lawrence Beetlejuice Shoggoth, do you have anything to do with this?” she growled.

“To do with what?” he asked. “The red alert? It sure brightened up my total lack of morning. I won’t name names, but someone in the bullpen jumped out their skin. Literally, the scales are still on the floor.”

A bony finger was extended his way. “I know about your little obsession with the living world. Why do you think I watch you so closely? You are one more misstep from being banished between life and death, how do ya like that? Do you want to spend eternity watching your precious breathers without anyone able to hear or see you?”

Ah. That old chestnut. “No, Ma,” he said, settling onto the floor.

“If I hear that this was your handiwork…”

“…My entrails will decorate the lobby. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.”

She flicked her wrist, and knocked him over the desk. He tumbled head over heels, and landed on his face. It goddam _hurt_ , because his mother could always hurt him. He made sure he hit the ground with a comical _splat_ sound so the kid wouldn’t panic and give the game away. When he looked up, the girl’s eyes were wide and fearful.

“How about this?” He stood up, and brushed his sleeves off. “That red alert was because some dumbass living human came into the Netherworld, right? And I can tell you didn’t catch them, because there’s more steam coming out of you than usual. I’ll go looking for the human. I’ll prove to you I didn’t do it.”

She crossed her arms, and drummed her fingers on her elbows. “Hmm…when you put it that way…this would be an _excellent_ way for you to demonstrate the potential for more responsibility, and – I DON’T CARE. Just stay out of the way.”

Coming from Juno, that was a sappy “I love you.” She stormed out of the office, and he waited until the rattling of her heels faded out of earshot before he bent down to check on the kid.

“You have to get the hell out of here,” he told the goth girl curled up under his desk.

“That was your _mother_?” she asked.

“She’s my boss, too. She’s a demon; she doesn’t get me. I’d take my considerable skills elsewhere, but, y’know, it’s toe the line or get wedged between life and death forever. How did a living twelve-year-old wind up in the Netherworld, anyway?”

“I’m fifteen!” she said, standing up. “And that’s none of your business.”

“It is so my business, if we’re going to get you to the land of the living so you can take me with you. What did you do? Black magic? Séance?”

“I, um…” She gave him a hard look before continuing. “I found a book.”

“A book? _Really_? Which book?” Most living world books wouldn’t tell you jack about the Netherworld. Concepts like limbo or the bardo came close, but…

“ _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ ,” the kid said.

For several seconds, all he could do was stare at her. Her expression became grossly fascinated.

“Your eyeballs are falling out of their sockets,” she said.

He shoved them back in, and shook his head to clear it. “How did you get the Handbook, kid?”

She crossed her arms. “My name is Lydia. And I found it.”

“Found it where?”

“Your sister’s sock drawer.” She glared at him. “Look, it doesn’t matter where I found it, but I found it, and the first chapter said you could get to the land of the dead by drawing a door and knocking three times. So I did that, and I tried to blend in by joining this line of dead people, but we went through a metal detector or something, and all these alarms started going off, so I ran.”

Her story had a gaping hole in it in the shape of the fact that she couldn’t have opened the Handbook unless she was recently deceased, which she wasn’t. A ghost had to have shown her the book and let her through the door, which was a big no-no. Obviously, she wasn’t going to give up her source.

He didn’t care. In fact, he was delighted that they were still teaching living teenagers that snitches got stitches.

“Fine,” he said. “I can get you back, but when you do –”

“I have to say your name three times?”

“You have to say my name three times.”

She sat on his desk. “Which name? That Juno lady called you a lot of things.”

And Juno had cursed him so he couldn’t say it. For the same reason people on house arrest couldn’t unlock their ankle bracelets.

“I’ve got a card somewhere,” he muttered. He reached into his jacket, and handed her the little business card.

“ ‘2nd Street Dermatology – You’ve Got Us Under Your Skin’?” she read.

“Wrong card!” He grabbed it back, and plunged his hands deep in his pants pockets. There was so much junk in the way. “Hold this,” he said, handing Lydia a skull, a xylophone, a planchette – “Here!”

He took his stuff back, and she read the card. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?”

He nodded.

“If I say this in the living world, it’ll bring you there?”

“In two shakes.”

“So you’re like a demon.”

“Half demon, half ghost.”

“Have you been here a long time?”

He nodded.

“Then you know how to find my mom!” she said. “You can be my guide! And as soon as we’re back in the living world, I _promise_ I’ll say your name. And you won’t have to deal with your terrible mother ever again!”

It was a nice thought.

“You can’t get your mom,” he said. “That’s just a no-go.”

Her expression soured. “No-go with _you_ , you mean,” she said. “You don’t really want to help me? Fine. I’ll manage by myself, I guess. That’s all I’ve been doing since my mom died, anyway.” She went for the door.

He scurried after her. “Lydia, wait! We can make a deal!”

Juno would kill her. That death wouldn’t be clean or fast. And then Juno could spend as long as she wanted punishing the newlydead girl for breaking the rules.

It wasn’t pleasant to discover there were still ideas that could make him want to vomit. Besides, if she went out by herself, he’d be losing his ticket to the living world. Another few centuries slogging around the office until the next stupid, lucky teenager came by. There was no point in not seeing this through as long as he could.

He forced a grin. “OK. I’ll be your guide.”

“You’ll help me find my mom?” she asked. “That’s really possible?”

“It’s really possible.”

It really wasn’t. He could try to argue with her, and eventually, she might listen and just go home. But if he was the one who burst her bubble, she’d be less inclined to do him a favor.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll help you find your mom. And I know exactly where to head. But first – we have to make you blend in.”

*

He smuggled the tiny goth out the back way, into the empty, rocky fields where the newlydeads lined up to head into the infinite Abyss that awaited them. No poor, unfortunate souls were hanging around just then, though you had to figure that people died about every second in the living room. He had given up trying to figure out the Netherworld’s relationship with time.

He made the tiny goth sit on a crag so they’d be eye-to-eye, and started rooting around his jacket for supplies. She looked skeptical, and he couldn’t blame her.

“How do I blend in?” Lydia asked.

“You have to look dead,” he said. “If you don’t go through the sensors – nice job, by the way, hopping right in the nearest line, very subtle – no one will _automatically_ be able to tell you’re alive. But! If anyone gets within arm’s length, you’ll get caught. You have to stop flaunting your beating heart and functioning liver.”

“So I have to look recently deceased…” she said, and chewed on her bottom lip. “Should I put fake blood all over my face? Pretend I got poisoned?” She made a choking sound. “Maybe a noose?” She yanked one hand over her shoulder and let her head loll forward.

He tried not to flinch. She didn’t know that she’d just punched below the belt. Especially since he was wearing suspenders.

“Only newlydeads carry their wounds around,” he said. “That’s a good way to tell someone’s inexperienced. Have you seen the receptionist? She acts like she knows everything, but she’s still got those slit wrists, and the carbon monoxide skin.” He snorted. “ _Suicides_.”

“I was going to jump off the roof of our new house,” Lydia said, very quietly. “Just yesterday. I wrote a note and everything.”

“Well, then, congratulations,” he said.

“For what?”

“For outdoing yourself. Running into hell wasn’t the dumbest idea you had this week. Have some grave dirt.” He tossed a handful of mud in her face.

She coughed, and tried to brush the dirt away, but just ended up smearing it across her forehead and cheeks. “What the HELL?”

“You have to make people believe you’ve been in the ground a long time. Get some of that under your fingernails, there you go. Now slouch!” he ordered. Her shoulders sagged. “Lower! Everything in your previous life is gone! No one cried at your funeral! Stoners are making out behind your head stone!”

“I’m _deeeeead_ ,” she said, stretching out the word and adding some vocal fry. She slid off the crag, and raised her arms like a zombie. Her eyes were half-closed. “Woe is me. How I long for one more breath.”

“Very nice.” He considered, then reached out and messed up her hair. “There. Dial it back by 30% and you’re golden.”

Her eyes lit up with a fervor only living teenagers had. “Does that mean we can go?”

“Yes. But you have to _follow my lead_ , capeesh?”

“Capeesh,” she said, and he didn’t believe her.

He snapped his suspenders. “It’s showtime! Let’s go to Saturn!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to leave comments; I'll almost certainly reply.


	2. Worm Welcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice and Lydia begin their long walk through Saturn, but find themselves waylaid by a boy band, Zagnuts, and all the obstacles a desert otherworld can offer.

“I don’t understand,” Lydia said, as they crossed from the midnight of the administrative area, toward the hot afternoon of Saturn, through the twilight in between. “What’s Saturn? Are we going to the planet…somehow?”

“Nope. Totally unrelated, and don’t ask me who named it. Saturn is the part of the Netherworld that acts as a trap for ghosts who get out of line, like if you try to leave the house you’re haunting, or jump the line in processing _like someone I could mention_. Going through processing would only take a couple steps, but Saturn is an anti-shortcut from the feverish nightmares of M.C. Escher. It’s a giant desert, and it’s full of sandworms. Those are snake monsters that eat ghosts. Foreshadowing?” he muttered to himself.

“This is so weird,” Lydia muttered. “I love it.”

She didn’t seem like she was being sarcastic. Maybe hanging around her wasn’t going to be too terrible.

Unfortunately, he saw trouble ahead.

“Keep your head down,” he whispered to Lydia. “Look dead. Deader than that. And don’t sneeze! Dead people never sneeze!”

“What?”

“ _Hello, Beetlejuice,_ ” said five tenor voices in unison. A cluster of expressionless young white men was drifting through the shadows toward him and Lydia. The boys had died in their late teens and very early twenties, long enough ago that two of them sported frosted tips. They were dressed just differently enough to be distinguishable from one another, in dated pants and t-shirts with no personality.

“Hey, Boy Inferno,” he grunted.

“ _What are you doing out here?_ ” they asked. They all floated six inches off the ground, in a formation reminiscent of migrating ducks.

He rolled his eyes. “Just running an errand for Juno. Miss Argentina find that living intruder yet?”

“ _Not that we’ve heard. Who’s your friend?_ ”

“New hire. Juno wants her on border patrol. Her name’s Lydia, and she’s boring. Kids these days, you know, they think eyeliner and TikTok counts as personality. But them’s the rules: if you add to the work, you have to help out.”

“ _Do you want to hear the introduction song, Lydia?_ ”

Geez, they didn’t back off easy. “Save that for people who’ve committed genocide or worse.”

“ _We were talking to Lydia_.”

At his elbow, Lydia scratched the end of her nose. Boy Inferno caught the gesture, and as one, cocked their heads.

“ _What did you die of…?_ ” they asked her.

“Um, I don’t want to talk about it,” Lydia said, which was the wrong thing. All newlydeads ever wanted to do was blather on about how they’d bitten it.

“OK, you got me!” He stepped between Lydia and the boys. “This isn’t an approved mission to Saturn. We were actually trying to, ah, hide out from Juno for a while. She is in a mood today, I tell ya. Just impossible. She wants me to take a statement from all the recently deceased who were in line when the alarm went off, and then pinch each of them really, really hard to see if they still have nerve endings. I’d rather swallow my own toenails. Remember that time Juno made me swallow my own toenails? You were there for that, weren’t you? So be a hive-minded pal and help me stay on the DL. _This_ one already threatened to tattle if I didn’t show her my good hiding spot.” He jerked his head at Lydia.

Boy Inferno blinked.

“ _Alright, then_ ,” they said, and each voice sounded suspicious. But they drifted back toward the administrative area.

Lydia stared as they went. “Who are those guys?”

“Boy Inferno is a dead boy band. They didn’t have enough brains or personality to be individuals when they were a living boy band, and when their tour bus crashed, the situation got worse.”

“Yikes. And speaking of yikes, what were you saying about sandworms? Are they going to eat us?”

He waggled one hand back and forth, and started walking. “Eh. It’s probably OK. You’re alive, so they’ll leave you alone. I’m half-ghost, half-demon, which confuses them more than anything. We’ll be fine if we don’t run into a sandworm that’s pissed off or starving.” They were crossing into Saturn proper. The terrain changed from dark gravel to rolling sand dunes dotted with twisted rock formations. Wooden doors hovered here and there, from three feet off the ground to 20 stories high. There was the light and warmth of a yellow sun, but if you turned in every direction, you would never see a sun or any other stars in the royal blue sky.

“Huh. Now I kind of want to meet a sandworm...” Lydia said, looking around like one was going to pop out from behind a dune.

“Yup. That’s definitely foreshadowing.”

“So…what’s it like? Being half-demon? How does that, um, happen?”

He waved his hands to turn them into sock puppets – one red and bearing a vague resemblance to Juno, the other a grey blob and as good a representation as he’d ever had of his father. “Hello, children!” he said in a screechy voice. “Let’s talk about the occult birds and bees. When a demon woman tolerates a living human male very much…”

She shoved him. “I know that, gross! I’m ace, but not completely _ignorant_. I just wondered if you were ever alive.”

He put his hands back to normal. “Uh-huh. I was alive. Looooong time ago, though. Long enough that we didn’t pay much attention to what year it was, and only bathed twice a lifetime, and drank beer instead of water. Hm. Or maybe that was all just me. Anyway, Juno only had me to see what would happen if you mixed demon magic with ghost abilities. Turns out, you get yours truly. She hated the result, and I never got any little siblings to chase around. But it’s fine with the just the two of us; my mom has this sweet thing she says to me every day: ‘I wish you had never been born.’ I think it’s a Swedish pet name.”

“How did you die?” Lydia asked.

“I asked a bunch of annoying questions that weren’t any of my business and someone stabbed me.”

“Ha ha,” she deadpanned. “How far is it, anyway?” she asked, shading her eyes. “I don’t _see_ anything…”

“Distance doesn’t really work like that here, and we could move way, way faster if we were both dead. But it’s pretty damn far.”

She sighed.

*

He had to give Lydia Deetz this: she was a trooper. She was wearing a dress, and boots that were very much not made for walking, but she kept moving, eyes forward, not a single complaint. When her stomach growled like an angry guard dog, she held her head high and acted like she didn’t notice.

“OK, time for a break!” he said.

“No!” she said. “We have to keep going.”

“If you keep going like this, you’re going to collapse, and then you’ll die, and a sandworm will eat you, and that’s my whole day gone. Sit down.”

“I don’t need to.”

She was going to give him grey hairs, she really was. He shook one hand like he was shooing a fly, and she stumbled backwards until she sat on the closest rock.

Lydia’s eyes bugged. “What am I – what are you –?”

“You’ve never been possessed before?”

She stood back up. He waved his hand again, and she sat.

“No, keep it up,” he said. “This is fun.”

He flicked his fingers, and her expression brightened.

“ _Beetlejuice, you’re my role model!_ ” she said, in a tone much more chipper than any that had ever come out of her mouth, he was sure. He released her.

Lydia’s face soured like old milk mixed with lemon juice, and she made the fingers-down-the-throat gesture. “I’ll sit for _five_ minutes. Don’t do that again.”

“I always knew I’d make a great babysitter!” He settled on the other side of the rock. He folded his hands over his stomach, figuring he’d take a nap if she stayed quiet.

She didn’t. “My mom would love all this,” Lydia said. “Her favorite holiday was Halloween. We’d make our own haunted houses in the garage – but in the summer, when no one in the neighborhood was expecting it. She liked the weird stuff in the world. Or – she _likes_ the weird stuff in the world. She doesn’t just avoid it, like most people do. Like my dad does. I think she’ll like you, even.”

He wanted to make a face at the idea of a well-adjusted person liking him (though it was a nice feeling, deep in his black heart), but Lydia couldn’t see him, so it would be wasted effort.

She was quiet for a while, and he thought he was free to drift off to sleep.

“Um…do you have any food?” she asked.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handful of Zagnuts. He tossed the kid two. “Here ya go.”

“Why so many Zagnuts?” Lydia asked. “They’re good, but I didn’t think people ate these anymore.”

“It’s the only candy in the vending machines in the Netherworld.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because everything around here is at a baseline of low-grade crappiness. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Are you really supposed to spend eternity here when you die?” she asked, in a muffled way that told him she’d bitten off half a candy bar at once. “It seems like it should either be a whole lot better or a whole lot worse.”

“You aren’t supposed to spend eternity here; that’s the point,” he said. He popped a Zagnut into his mouth, and swallowed it wrapper and all. “You have to move on, eventually.”

“To what?”

“Do I look like a priest? Or a philosopher? Or a TV psychic?”

“The last one, a little. A bad one. The kind who gets tricked by reporters to help contact their dead kid, but it turns out the kid is really alive and just in the next booth over in the Denny’s.”

“Touché. The point is, nobody around here knows. You hang around the administrative area until you’re ready to go into the miserable nothingness of the Abyss, and then you swirl around in the Abyss until…I dunno, something else happens. Maybe you just stay in the Abyss forever. I don’t plan on finding out anytime soon.”

“Is that where my mom is?”

“Yup. If she didn’t come running when you first came through the door, she’s definitely gone through security. Don’t worry, though. You poke your head into the Abyss and shout her name a few times, and she’ll come right out.”

He lied easily. He always had.

“I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to contact us,” Lydia said. “I guess she must be confused, because we moved and everything. My dad dragged me out to Connecticut, away from New York and all our friends and family, to work on this stupid gated community project he has in mind. And he took my annoying life coach with us. She’s _friendly_ and _positive_ , and keeps trying to make me fill out a star chart. I don’t know why he thinks she’s helping me. It’s not like there aren’t actual therapists in Connecticut. I don’t get it.”

He chewed another Zagnut for a beat, waiting to see if she was making a joke. Then he broke the news. “Your dad is boinking the life coach.”

“What?!” she said. She whirled around the rock to sit right next to him. “How can you know that?”

“Um, because I’m an adult with a brain.” He grabbed the top of his head and lifted his skull to show his grey matter.

“He isn’t…Dad’s not…” She slumped. “He’s totally sleeping with her.”

“Totally,” he agreed.

“How could he do that? Mom’s only been dead a few months. Well…when he sees Mom – if he just _talks_ to her again – he’ll understand what an ass he’s been.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, non-committedly.

“How much farther do we have?” she asked.

“Long enough to aaaaaaalmost make you give up and collapse in despair.”

She groaned.

For a second, he thought her groan was superhumanly long and loud, and he prepared to be impressed. Then he noticed the ground was shaking.

“Looks like it’s our unlucky day!” he said. “Run!”

They both got to their feet, and made it about five steps before the sand exploded to their left. A sandworm rose from the earth, its black-and-white stripes blurring into grey. At the peak of its jump, its inner head came out of its mouth, eyes glaring, jaw snapping.

It dove back down toward them.

He dodged one way, and Lydia dodged the other. The spray of sand blocked out everything, and when it all cleared, the sandworm had risen from the ground again, undulating in and out of the dunes. Lydia stood in place, looking all around. But it was hard to know where to run when you were being attacked by a sandworm.

The sandworm’s chomping heads came out of the ground an arm’s length from Lydia. She yelled, and punched it in the closest eye.

The heads hissed and thrashed, knocking Lydia down. The sandworm dove down, and the sand around them whirled and roiled, until he felt like he was standing in boiling dirt.

When the sandworm rose again, it accidentally scooped up Lydia. She showed a little more survival instinct than she had before, and clung to the sandworm’s back.

“Knock it _off_!” he heard her say. She nudged the sandworm with her left boot, and the sandworm turned to the right. But it had had enough of its passenger, and whipped its body to throw Lydia like a beanbag.

She shrieked as she fell through the air. He stretched his legs, about 20 feet, and caught her.

As he dragged her back to the ground, he braced himself for another attack by the sandworm. Maybe if he transformed into something big and scary, showed some lionfish spines or extra limbs, the worm would leave them alone. Getting swallowed would be no good. Not only did he usually try to avoid getting _eaten_ , but sandworms’ digested prey just wound up back in processing…after a wait of at _least_ a decade or so.

The sandworm jumped over their heads, dove into the ground, and kept going. Its writhing body upset every dune it plowed through, but it didn’t double back.

He wasn’t going to look a gift worm in the mouth.

“And don’t come back!” he yelled. “G’on, git! Git!”

Lydia jumped out of his arms. “That was awesome! I thought I was going to die, but it was awesome.”

He was more tired than he’d been in a while. He was tired like Juno had been screaming at him for hours. Also, there was a lot of sand in his shoes. “You did OK But why the hell did you try to punch it in the face?”

She didn’t look ashamed in the slightest. “I thought it would be like avoiding a shark attack. That’s what the Discovery guy said during _Shark Week_ : punch the shark hard in the eye so it leaves you alone.”

“Since when has punching something made it leave you alone?” he asked. “That has never worked when I’ve tried it with people.”

“Because then the shark – or the sandworm – thinks you’re too much of a threat and it ignores you. I made it go away, didn’t I?’

“I seriously doubt you’re what made it leave, Karate Kid. If a sandworm had its multiple hearts set on eating us, it would take more than your mechanical bull riding skills to dissuade it. I don’t know – I’m not so sure it was all that interested in us.”

“If it wasn’t going for us, why did it come over here?”

“I said I don’t know! I’m not a sandworm scientist.”

“Your hair is changing color,” she said, pointing at his head.

“Can you blame me? I’m pretty pissed off right now.”

She brightened. “It changes color with your mood?”

“ _Yeah_.”

“Can I touch it?”

He grunted, and tilted his head. She patted some strands on the right side of his head, which were dark green at the tips, but probably working their way to red. The cocoon the caterpillar had made behind his ear popped open, and a death’s-head hawkmoth shot into the air and planted itself on Lydia’s nose.

“Augh!” she yelped, and fell right on her ass. He doubled over laughing while she tried to get back up with dignity.

“You’ve taken things too far this time, Beetlejuice!”

Once, just once, he’d like to go 48 hours without hearing those words shouted at him.

He turned to see Miss Argentina stomping up a sand dune, clipboard in hand, sash askew, which meant she was _really really really_ upset.

“What have I done this time?” he asked, resigned.

“What have you done _this_ time?” Miss Argentina pointed at Lydia. “Let’s start with child endangerment! And the fact that your disappearance has about given Juno apoplexy.”

“Ah, she _loves_ me.”

“No! She just knows that if she hasn’t heard from you in twelve hours, it means you’re up to something! And that means the rest of us suffer! I’m just glad she gave me clearance to go to Saturn to look for your sorry, sagging ass, so at least I was able shoo a sandworm away from some newlydeads. I have a sneaking suspicion you bear some responsibility for that, too?”

“OK, that is both not fair and completely true,” he said. “And I’ll have you know I’m doing a good deed. I’m guiding this one around the Netherworld.” He jerked his head at Lydia.

“And why, in the name of all that is sacred, would you consider that a good idea?”

“Um…” He faltered. He may have been able to fudge a few details with Lydia, but Miss Argentina had been around long enough to know how the Abyss worked.

“Newlydeads…” Lydia said. “That must have been what attracted the sandworm. It wasn’t coming for us after all.”

“Why did you drag newlydeads with you?” he asked, happy to change the subject. “What, did you need help shouting at me? Anger backup singers?”

“Of course not.” Miss Argentina frowned. “But – that’s a good idea.” She clicked her pen, and scribbled on her clipboard. “I am actually writing that down. If Boy Inferno is free…”

“Excuse me!” came a woman’s voice from the bottom on the dune. “I’m so sorry – could you wait just a minute?”

“It’s very hard to walk on sand!” came a sexy, nasal male voice from the same direction.

“These newlydeads have a problem, you see,” said Miss Argentina, her voice icy. But something was wrong – she wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on Lydia. “Apparently, a living person used their Handbook without permission.”

Lydia became interested in the horizon. “Huh. That’s weird.”

Miss Argentina jabbed a finger in Lydia’s face. “Oh, don’t even try that on me, living girl. I am not in the mood today.”

“Whoof! We made it.” The newlydead couple crested the dune…and he was _smitten_.

The woman was white, a pretty blonde, in a green wrap dress and suburban-mom-at-the-nice-grocery-store boots. Her companion was a beautiful Desi man, with light brown skin and a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead that he _immediately_ wanted to run his fingers through.

“Oooooh…” he said. “Hel _lo_ , sexy…”

Lydia looked at him with a scientific expression. “Which one?”

“The Trader Joe’s guardian angels over here. Not that Miss A isn’t pretty easy on the eyes herself, but she’s a friend of Ellen, know what I mean? A patron of U-Haul. An adopter of shelter cats. Wrong tree, is what I’m saying. But she loves me platonically.”

“She doesn’t,” Miss Argentina said.

The couple pushed past him and bent over Lydia.

“Oh, thank goodness!” the woman said.

“Lydia!” said the man. “I’m so glad we found you. We were worried sick!”

“Adam, Barbara?” Lydia said. “What…what are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to go to the Netherworld.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to make it clear: I'm physically basing Adam in this fic on Danny Pudi, who was the first guy to be hired to play Adam. He left really early on, no idea why, but I thought the nod would be fun. No disrespect meant to the other actors.
> 
> And I stole the "only Zagnuts in the vending machines" thing from Preacher.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment if you want, and I'll probably reply.


	3. Ghost to Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice and Lydia are almost to the Abyss, meaning Beetlejuice’s lies may soon be revealed. But first, they have to deal with the fact that living, dead, or demonic, parents just don't get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a while, but I hope the fact that it's on the longer side makes up for the wait. Then again, the length is part of the reason it needed extra writing and editing time.

He watched in surprise as the ghost couple fussed over Lydia. He raised his eyebrows at Miss Argentina, but she just shrugged.

“Are you all right?” the man, Adam, pressed, grabbing Lydia’s shoulders.

“Lydia, you look terrible!” the woman, Barbara, said. “What happened?”

“It’s just a dead person disguise,” Lydia said. She rubbed her face with her sleeve, getting rid of most of the grave dirt. “These are the Maitlands. They died in their house, and they were still there when me and Dad and Delia moved in,” she said. She pointed at him, and he made sure to straighten his tie. “Guys, this is my guide, Beetlejuice.”

He floated to the Maitlands’ eye level and rested his chin in his hands. “Heeey. So, what brings two tall glasses of apple cider vinegar like yourselves to a place like this?”

“Beetlejuice?” said Adam. “Like the star? Orion’s armpit?”

“You’re named after an armpit?” Lydia asked.

“It suits him well,” Miss Argentina said.

“The _point_ is,” he said, “Lydia, are these the ghosts who opened the Handbook for you?”

“We showed it to her, but we did _not_ say she could use it to go to the Netherworld,” Adam said. “The three of us were working our way through it together, until yesterday when she up and disappeared.”

“And we’re here to take her home right away,” Barbara said.

“I can’t leave yet,” Lydia said.

“Honey, it’s not safe here. This place has demons, and giant snakes, and your father is going to notice you’re gone any minute.”

“He doesn’t even notice when I’m around.”

“I doubt that’s true,” Adam said.

“Besides,” Barbara said, “we notice.”

Lydia’s voice shook when she said: “Well…you can’t make me go.”

The three of them stared at each other in uneasy silence for a few seconds.

“A-a-hem!” Miss Argentina said, waving her clipboard around to break their gazes. “I’ll leave you two to talk sense into her – God knows, Beetlejuice won’t help.”

“That was unnecessary,” he said.

“I’m going to head Juno off at the pass,” Miss Argentina continued. “If that’s still possible.” She got in Lydia’s face. “You better go home while you still can. Juno doesn’t like breathers jumping back and forth, you understand? And even if she doesn’t catch you, you hang around with him, something might happen that you’ll both regret.”

Lydia set her jaw. “I know who he is, OK? He’s a total ass, but he’s my friend.”

Miss Argentina patted her head, though Lydia immediately swatted her away.

“Take care of this one, Beetlejuice.” Miss Argentina said. “And you? Take care of him. Maybe your two loves of disaster will cancel each other out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to deal with a rampaging bureaucrat. This is in _your_ hands, until later.” She tapped the Maitlands’ shoulders as she left.

“So!” he said, pointing from Adam to Barbara. “You had the Handbook. You read the Handbook. You know you were supposed to proceed directly to the Netherworld, but you didn’t. Why?”

“Well…” Adam cleared his throat.

“See, we love our house,” Barbara said.

“It’s a Victorian, with original crown molding,” Adam said.

“We poured our heart and souls into our home, though it turns out we should have paid a little more attention to the floorboards.” Barbara scratched her forehead. A horrific gash blossomed there, and shut as quickly as a blinking eye. She probably didn’t notice.

“And we, ah, ‘woke up,’ I suppose,” Adam said. “And this whole other family was moving in! With no appreciation for the building! Changing the wallpaper, getting rid of our favorite rug, throwing out the antiques…”

“Not even donating them,” Barbara said. “They could have donated that crib!”

“Of course we had to do something,” Adam said.

Barbara smiled at Lydia. “Though we’re so glad we met Lydia. I _am_ starting to regret showing you that Handbook.”

“Let me get this straight,” he said, pressing his hands together. “You disobeyed the rules of the afterlife and delayed your eternal rest because someone rearranged your furniture?”

The Maitlands looked at each other, and nodded sheepishly.

“You hot little rule-breakers, you.”

“Beetlejuice is going to help me see my mom again,” Lydia said.

He was offended at how skeptical the Maitlands looked.

“There was nothing in the Handbook about that,” Adam said.

“In fact, chapter two said: ‘no human has ever come back from the dead, so never never never never never try,’” Barbara said.

Lydia frowned. “I didn’t say she could come back from the dead. But if you guys are ghosts, that means she can be one too, right? Beetlejuice knows where she is in the Netherworld.”

“I do,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie.

“He’s taking me there right now.”

“Is it dangerous?” Adam asked.

“Noooooo…” he said.

Barbara crossed her arms. “OK, this isn’t as scary as we feared. But Lydia, you shouldn’t have done this without talking to us.”

“You don’t have to scold me!” Lydia snapped.

He leaned between them. “But feel free to scold _me_ any time,” he said to Barbara, pumping his eyebrows.

Barbara’s nostril’s flared. “Do you talk that way to Lydia?” she asked.

“ _What?_ ” He reeled back, and raised his hands. “No! God, no! I walk the very fine line between lovably perverted and _evil_ , but I do _walk_ it.”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Barbara said.

“Is there such a thing as ‘lovably perverted’?” Adam asked. “It really seems like you might have some boundary issues, sir.”

He raised his hands higher, in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. You want to keep this professional? I can be professional.” He plucked the pair of glasses he saw sticking out of Adam’s shirt pocket, put them on his own face, and affected his nerd voice. “ _I majored in Afterlife Studies, I graduated from Harvard Business School, I’ve been employed by the Netherworld for the past 3000 years, and I was named employee of the eon seven times_.” He handed the glasses back to Adam. “Besides, do you think Miss Argentina would have just walked away if I was _that_ much trouble?”

“She did seem authoritative,” Adam said.

“It’s the clipboard.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable leaving you alone with him,” Barbara said to Lydia.

“I’m fine,” Lydia said. “I _promise_ I’m fine. You guys are going to love meeting my mom! She’s friendly. Probably the friendliest person in the family. You guys can show her how to be a ghost, since you’ve learned so much. She’ll catch right up.”

Adam turned to him. “Is it really possible to bring somebody back like that?”

Whelp, he was definitely starting to have a few regrets. Too late to back down now, though. “In the Netherworld, a lot is possible.”

The Maitlands had an apparent silent conversation with each other. Barbara pursed her lips. Adam frowned. Barbara raised her eyebrows. Adam gave a little shrug.

“If you’re gone for too much longer, we’re coming back,” Barbara said at last.

“OK,” Lydia said.

“And you are never going to do anything from the Handbook for the Recently Deceased without our direct supervision.”

“Ugh, fine.”

“As for you, Mr. Beetlejuice, if Lydia gets so much as a sprained wrist we’ll…we’ll…” Adam was obviously struggling to think of something threatening. “We’ll cut off your head!”

He was sure his hair was starting to turn bright green. “Oh my God, please do, that would be hilarious,” he said.

Adam wilted when it seemed to click with him that he didn’t know how to threaten a ghost.

“Stay safe,” Barbara said to Lydia. “No matter what.”

Barbara took a piece of chalk out of the pocket of her dress, and drew three lines on the rock closest to her. She knocked three times, and an impossible door opened up between worlds. Green mist obscured the space between realities. Adam and Barbara disappeared into it, and the door slammed shut and vanished behind them.

Lydia watched them go, sucking hard on her teeth. He worried she might be having second thoughts.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “One last push. By the way…thanks for lying to Miss Argentina back there, saying I was your friend. I can tell she was secretly happy to hear I’m going soft.”

Lydia gave him a reproachful look as they started walking. “I wasn’t lying. You’re my friend.”

“I…am?”

“Beetlejuice, you’re creepy and bugs come out of your ears. Of course you’re my friend.”

His smile felt like it was going to split his face. “I have a new best frieeeeend!” he crowed, and cartwheeled across Lydia’s path.

“Don’t be so needy,” she said, laughing. “I didn’t say _best_ friend.”

“Right. I’ll bet you have a lot of cool friends, who hang out in the hot graveyards and try on each others’ shrouds. Let me guess – you and three other girls at school keeping _talking_ about forming a coven, but deep down you know you’ll never _do_ it.”

“I actually don’t have that many friends. Not anymore. I have trouble, sometimes,” she said. “I like being weird, and I never want to change myself just to ‘fit in,’ but some people don’t know how to deal with it. When my mom was sick, a lot of the friends I did have freaked out. My mom had cancer, and she got really bad, really fast. I guess they didn’t know what to say, but instead of saying _anything_ it was like…like…what was Delia talking about the other day? Like I was kale salad. Then my dad yanked me out of school before the year was over and barely anyone said goodbye. It was like I was the one who died.”

Things were getting too real. Death, he could handle. Grief, he could not.

“Well, they can go screw themselves.” In his experience that was what people wanted to hear when they spoke in long, angry paragraphs.

“Yes,” Lydia said. “Yes, they can.”

*

One second, Saturn was the only thing visible in every direction. The next, the black line of the Abyss made up the horizon.

“Is that it?” Lydia asked.

“Yup.”

They stood near the top of a sand dune, looking out at the liminal space of the universe. He was getting…uneasy. When he’d first struck his deal with Lydia, he hadn’t pictured himself stringing her along this far. Granted, he hadn’t had any kind of exit strategy at all. He rarely did. And look at the great place that had brought him! Stuck in literal hell, working for his mother, pinning all his hopes of escape on a teenager he was lying to.

Maybe it was time to reexamine some stuff.

“Hey, kid…” he began.

“What?” she asked.

“Things might get a little rough in there.”

“Is the Abyss dangerous?”

“Not dangerous, per se. But there’s something I don’t think you understand –”

“I don’t care,” Lydia said.

“No, see, this isn’t a cute little rule to rebel against, this is important –”

“I said I don’t care.” She pointed at the Abyss ahead of them. “If my mom is in there, I’m going in, no matter what.”

“And that kind of inflexible, bullheaded thinking is admirable, and definitely not something you should discuss with a therapist, but –”

Lydia took a deep breath, and coughed. “Something smells terrible.”

He snorted. “It’s called musk, and if you were romantically inclined, you’d know it’s important for attracting –”

“I know that smell!” she said. “That’s one of Delia’s fake smudge sticks! She buys them from a super-white Gwyneth Paltrow wannabe in Arizona, and she waved them all over the Maitlands’ house when we moved in. They smell like burned sugar and farts.”

He took a deep breath, and considered. “Yeah, I guess it depends on whose farts you’ve been smelling. Wait – why would Delia be waving those around here?”

“Why would she be here at all?” Lydia dashed to the top of the hill, and looked down. “Oh. My. God.”

He looked where she was looking, down at the cluster of four adults just outside a door to the living world. The Maitlands were back, which didn’t surprise him. The surprise was that they’d brought two living friends along. One was a burly man with dark hair, who was holding a wooden cross aloft. The other was a redhead woman in a patterned dress, flinging the smoke from her burning plants around like it was going to do anything but annoy anyone within a fifty-foot radius. This had to be Dad, and the infamous life coach. Oh, things were about to get daytime-talk-show interesting.

“Dad!” Lydia yelled, running down toward the small crowd. “Delia! What are you doing here?”

All four adults turned to Lydia with relief so powerful it practically stirred wind through the sand. The live ones ran to Lydia and enveloped her in a desperate hug.

“Thank goodness,” said Lydia’s father, almost smacking her with the cross.

For his part, he sidled up next to the Maitlands. “So, you gonna cut off my head now?” he asked. They didn’t laugh, which disappointed him.

Lydia had wiggled away from the hug. “Dad, why do you even have that cross? You’re an atheist.”

“I’m a practical man. If there was a chance religious iconography could offer protection, I wanted to bring it along on the rescue mission.”

“Do you think this is a rescue mission? What did Adam and Barbara _tell_ you?”

“Lydia, we’re sorry,” Barbara said, and he caught the tone of someone trying their best to be gentle. “We had no choice. We were going to wait for you, and try to stall, maybe, but in the end we couldn’t.” She lowered her voice, but he could still hear. “Charles and Delia found your note.”

Lydia frowned. “What note? I didn’t tell anyone that I was – oh _no_.”

_I was going to jump off the roof of our new house. Just yesterday. I wrote a note and everything._

“Whoops,” he said under his breath.

“I was about to call 911,” Charles said. “And then these people _appeared_ in the middle of the room.”

“We were worried we weren’t going to be able to do it,” Barbara said. “No offense, Mr. Deetz, Ms. Schlimmer, but you don’t seem prone to the strange and unusual.”

“But we manifested!” Adam said, sounding proud. “We kept popping in and out at first, but finally, we made them see us!”

“It was certainly a surprise,” Charles said. “They told me you were unharmed, but that you’d traveled to…”

“The Netherworld,” Lydia snapped.

“The Netherworld?”

“The spiritual energy here is unsettling,” Delia said.

She was staring at him. He stuck his pointed, striped tongue out at her. “Boo,” he said, without enthusiasm.

She flinched, and dropped her plant bundle. The fire went out when it hit the sand. He picked up the smudge stick, and nibbled it. Not bad. He stuffed it in his jacket for later.

“The Maitlands, who I suppose you could consider our new neighbors, said you’d found some sort of guide, and that he was going to help you find – find –” Charles cleared his throat. “Ah. Excuse me. Anyway, I see now they must have been referring to this…rodeo clown who died of consumption?”

“Wow,” he said, straightening his tie. “OK. Wooooow. That’s actually a new one.”

“This is Beetlejuice. He’s my friend.”

His stomach jumped when she said “friend.”

“I’m a demon,” he said, holding out his hand for Charles to shake.

Charles gave him a firm, businesslike handshake. “My daughter hasn’t gotten up to any terrible misadventure, has she? No Satanism, bodily harm, drug experimentation?”

“She ate some Zagnuts and fought a giant worm. She’s fine.”

“How did you beat us here?” Lydia asked. “We’re almost to the Abyss.”

“Well, the Handbook for the Recently Deceased says you shouldn’t expect the Netherworld to have a consistent temporal and special relationship with the living world,” Adam said.

Ah, his future boyfriend was learning so much. “Yeah, hot stuff, that’s the basics. In addition, the four of you were pretty focused on finding Lydia, am I right? That’s some powerful psychic steering. It probably made sure you opened up the door close to where she was going to be.”

Charles rounded on Lydia. “I’m still – I’m still _very_ confused, but I’m glad you’re alright.”

Lydia crossed her arms. “Good. You can go back now. I’ll see you later.”

“Absolutely not. We’re going home.”

“That house is not our home,” she said.

“This isn’t up for debate. You are walking through this door right now or there will be serious consequences.”

“What consequences? You’ll take me away from the friends and family I have left? You’ll make me move to a neighborhood I hate for a project you don’t have funding for? You’ll hire some woman you say is meant to help me grieve, but boink her in secret? Oh, wait, you already did _all_ of that!”

“How…how did you know Delia and I were together?” Charles asked.

“I’m so sorry, did you say ‘boink’?” Delia asked.

“How long was it going to happen behind my back, Dad? Was it some kind of joke to you two?”

Delia put her hand over her mouth. Charles reached for his daughter, like he was going to put his hands on her shoulders, but stopped.

“Lydia…it wasn’t a joke. We should have told you a long time ago, and I apologize. But though it may seem sudden, Delia and I love each other. More than anything, we both want what’s best for you. Running around this world cannot be a good thing.”

She shook her head. “Why would you think I trust you anymore? We have the whole afterlife around us, and all you can think about is going back to burying your head in the sand!”

“Be sensible. I have never believed in the afterlife, but I am willing to concede that I was wrong. But if you could just bring someone back whenever you wanted, even as a ghost, even if it was difficult, we’d have heard about it by now.”

“Beetlejuice said –”

“Mr. Beetlejuice is wrong. Or he’s lying to you.”

“No! This isn’t about him, or me. You just want to forget about Mom!” she yelled at her father. “You don’t care that she’s gone!”

Charles flinched.

He looked from Lydia to her father, waiting to see what response she’d get. Whenever he backtalked Juno – which he would admit was often – he never got away with it without having to dodge at least a slap, usually worse. Most parents, he thought, he was pretty sure, weren’t as volatile as Juno, but Lydia was hammering on the family sore spots. He prepared himself to step in. It might be nice to teach a lesson to a crappy parent who didn’t have demonic powers to hold over him.

Charles didn’t yell. He didn’t lash out at Lydia. He just did a good impression of a statue.

When he finally spoke, there was the barest tremor in his voice. “Lydia. Through the door. Now.”

“I said no.” She pulled away from father. “Beetlejuice, do the thing!” she said, waving her hands. “Make them go.”

“They can just come back,” he warned.

“We’re almost there! Do it!”

He made a production of rolling up his sleeves. “Iiiiiit’s showtime. But not for you!”

He waved his arms like a conductor, and as one, Adam, Barbara, Charles, and Delia turned around and marched toward the door.

“What’s going on?” Delia asked.

“So long, farewell…” he sang under his breath. “ _Adieu adieu adieu_ – or however that song goes.”

“I think we’re being possessed!” Barbara said, and there was something curious and excited under her fear. “I read about this.”

“Did you read how to stop it?” Charles asked. He flailed his arms, like windmilling could stop his feet from moving forward. Adam walked through the door.

“Um, not yet…” Barbara said.

Delia went through the door, then Charles and Barbara followed. The door to the living world slammed shut and disappeared.

“I think that was pretty good, but – kid?” He looked over his shoulder, and Lydia was already gone, sprinting up over the dune toward the Abyss. With her head start, she was out of his sight in a second.

“Hey, don’t do that!” he yelled. “Wait!”

He got no answer. Damn it all to hell. He picked up speed, and if he hustled, he’d be able to catch her before she got to the Abyss.

His feet were yanked out from under him, and he was dragged backwards, facedown, through the sand, until an unseen force flipped him over.

“ _Where is the living girl_?” Juno hissed.

The anger in her eyes was electric. He did his best to pull away, but all he could do was wriggle in her mental grip.

“Don’t lie to me,” Juno said. “I know you were with her. What does she want to do? Summon demons?”

“You know, it’s so weird, she actually wants to see her mom again. Not something I can relate to.”

Juno jerked her wrist. He flipped over and flew into the air, dangling right at her eye level.

“ _Tell me_ ,” Juno growled.

“She’s my friend.”

“You don’t have friends.”

He tried to break free, his limbs flailing in the air. “You’re going to _kill her_ , Ma!”

“This isn’t hard, Lawrence. She’s going to die eventually. Moving up the timeline to keep order in the Netherworld is reasonable, and you know it.”

“See, to me, that reaction is out of hand.” He sprouted as many arms as he could physically manage under the circumstances, all the hands reaching for Juno.

She batted them away, and grabbed him by the throat.

He choked. He was a damn ghost, and didn’t need to breathe, but immediately struggled for air as his throat crushed and burned with pain. Juno’s bony fingers didn’t relent. She let him go limp, looked him right in the eye.

“This is your last chance,” she said. “Tell me where the girl is.”

She gave him the barest freedom to speak. “One sec…” he croaked. He fumbled inside his jacket. “Lemme just grab something.”

He pulled out the fake smudge stick, and set it on fire. The dried plants and who-knew-what burst into stinking flame, and dragged the fire across Juno’s towering hairdo.

Her scream rattled his bones and threatened to knock his teeth out of his gums. But she dropped him. He hit the ground hard, but ignored the pain, got to his feet, and ran for the shadows ahead.

He could smell his mother burning. It was the smell of a tire fire, mixed with the smell of melting synthetic fabric, mixed with sulfur and hellfire and the cold knowledge at the center of it all that what he’d just done was beyond what she’d be willing to tolerate. She wouldn’t settle for giving him orders and knocking him around anymore. When she caught up with him, she’d tear him to pieces. She would drag him back to the administrative area and make an example of him. She’d make him regret being born, though that was all her fault anyway.

He couldn’t do anything about that now. Now, he had to make sure she didn’t catch up to Lydia.

The black stripe of the Abyss loomed before him. He expected it to either call to him, or repulse him. Instead, it just hung there in front of him, a simple fact.

“You’re not so tough,” he muttered.

Then he did the thing he’d sworn he wouldn’t do for at least another ten thousand years, and threw himself into the Abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I was being clever having Beetlejuice not being able to use his own name in his own narration but Holy Unclear Antecedents, Batman.


	4. To Beetle or Not to Beetle?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beetlejuice races to catch up to Lydia before Juno does. But Lydia has entered the Abyss in search of her mother, and will soon learn Beetlejuice lied to her. Will Beetlejuice be able to keep his friend from getting attacked by a demon, AND keep her from hating him forever when she realizes what he has done?

The darkness…swirled. That was the only way to describe it. There was nothing but blackness all around, but the blackness wasn’t still. It undulated, with a few jagged beams of light jumping through the dark. The ground – if you could call it ground – was steep and uneven, like the floor of a funhouse.

“Hey, kid!” he called. “Where are you? Don’t go too far!”

No answer.

He ran, and almost tripped. He scrambled to get his footing, but he had to keep moving forward.

“LYDIA!” he yelled as loudly as he could.

And then he heard her.

“Mom?” She was calling into the void around them. “Mama? Emily Deetz? It’s me, Lydia.”

A few more steps, and he saw her. Her dark clothes and hair made her next to invisible. But when he saw her, her energy and frantic movements made it clear she didn’t belong in this environment, among the deader than dead. She was running back and forth, peering into the shadows as if that would make a difference.

“Mom!” she yelled. “Mom, it’s Lydia!” Her voice cracked on: “Mommy? Can you hear me?”

He went up a short incline, and hopped to another. “Hey!” he yelled, hoping to get her attention.

Not only did she not look over, he also slipped and fell onto the ground. By the time he got up, she was out of sight again.

He groaned in frustration, and kept moving. Going deeper into the Abyss would keep Juno from catching up too quickly, but they couldn’t avoid her forever. Not even here.

Lydia appeared up ahead. She’d moved on to shouting her mother’s name. Like he’d told her to do.

“Emily Deetz!” she yelled. “Emily Deetz! Emily Evelyn Deetz! _Mom?!_ ”

“Hey,” he said. “You don’t –”

“Where is she?” she demanded, her voice ragged. “Where’s my mom? You told me she would be here.”

He raised his arms to either side. “She’s out here. At least, part of her is. And it’s all around you. So is just about everyone who has ever died.”

“Why isn’t she answering me?”

It was a hard, hard question to respond to, in more ways than one.

“That’s…complicated.”

“ _Where is she?_ ”

He took a deep breath he didn’t need. “She’s not…herself, anymore,” he ended up saying. “Ghosts can hold it together for a long time. Act like we’re people. And maybe we are. But once you give yourself over to the next step, then…” He struggled for the right words, and shrugged. “Then dead is dead is dead.”

“She isn’t responding to me.”

“She _can’t_. Or, she won’t. It’s not because of anything you’re doing wrong. What you want to do can’t be done.”

“But you told me –”

“Yeah, kid. I told you.”

“You lied to me,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“How could you do that?”

He’d had all the right justifications in mind when he’d first lied. _You wouldn’t have listened. You would have left me. I wanted to be free. I was just so miserable I couldn’t risk it._

The words didn’t come.

“I hate you!” Lydia spat. “I thought I knew what you were, but you’re even worse. You’re just a terrible, lonely bastard, and you’re don’t even realize how pathetic you are. Your mother is the only one who wants you around, and she’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. I can’t believe you let me think you were my friend.”

“I’m…I’m…”

“Stop talking to me!” She turned on her heel, and started walking deeper into the Abyss.

“I’m _sorry_ , OK? I really mean it. I’m sorry, Lydia.”

She stopped walking.

“What you have to understand is that the Netherworld is a truck stop. Nobody, except demons, is _meant_ to set up shop out there. Everyone leaves, to come in here, and become whatever it is dead people are really meant to become. Everyone. Sometimes, you hang around the Netherworld for decades. Sometimes, it’s a few minutes. It sounds like your mom’s stay would have been on the shorter side.”

She pressed her hands to her face.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it,” he said. “But that’s a _good_ thing. Trust me, kid, you don’t want to stick around the Netherworld too long. ”

It took him a second to realize she was crying.

“I’m not going to see her again?” Her words were thick.

He drew closer to her, feeling very much like he was approaching a land mine.

“Not here,” he said.

“I – I – I –!” She lowered her hands. Her shoulders were heaving. He could tell she wasn’t trying to decide what to say, but crying so hard she has having trouble forming words. Tears gushed down her face. “I don’t – what am I going to do now?”

The guilt was overwhelming. It pulled at him, dug its fingers in. He’d said all he knew, and tried to offer the closest thing he had to comfort. But fresh tears still welled up in her eyes.

“I just – I came all this way and she’s not – coming – back!”

She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.

He froze. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to help her, more than he had ever wanted to help anyone. But he didn’t know how.

 _Shake her!_ insisted the part of him that was chaotic and colorful, the part most like himself. _Tell her to snap out of it. Remind her that Juno is coming. Pull out your alarm clock that constantly screams, and say neither of you have any_ tiiiiiime _for this._

He ignored that part, and ignored the instincts that had kept him lonely and apathetic. His friend deserved more than that.

He didn’t know what else to do, though. So he let her cry. And he hoped that would be enough.

Eventually, she let go of him. Her makeup was smeared, her face was flushed and puffy, and she looked about three years younger.

“I think I got some snot on your jacket,” she mumbled.

“It’s seen worse.”

“I don’t actually hate you.”

“Oh. Huh.” How about that?

“I want to go home.”

“Me, too.” The old feeling came back, the one that had been buried even deeper than he was. The lonely and aching urge to go home, even if you were already there. Even if you had never had one.

And one day it was all too damn much. And he’d done something dumb. And now he was…here.

“Why is your hair purple?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “Egad. You’ve got me emotional.”

She lowered her head. Her shoulders sagged.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

He squinted into the darkness moving around them. “You leave.”

“What?”

“Juno’s on her way,” he said. “It’s bad. I _really_ pissed her off this time, and if she catches up –”

A rumble in the distance. A waft of smoke.

“Lucky for you,” he continued, “she might be more mad at me than she is at you. You have to go.”

“ _Lawrence!_ ” came his mother’s roar.

Lydia frowned. “She sounds different.”

“I’ll bet she _is_ different. A rampaging demon is not a pretty sight. You can’t be around for this. You gotta get out of here.”

“I don’t have any chalk with me,” she said.

“She’d be able to follow you into the living world, anyway.”

“Then let’s make a run for it!”

“No,” he said. “ _Stay_. And be quiet. She knows I’m in here, but she still doesn’t know exactly where you are. I’ll go and distract her; you run once we’re gone. Find the Maitlands, or Miss Argentina, and they’ll help you get back to living world.”

“Will we be safe from Juno then?” Lydia asked. Her eyes were filled with fear.

It was time to stop lying to her. “You won’t be, if she has her mind set on punishing you. But! I’m going to take the blame. Toss myself on her sword.” He pantomimed stabbing himself, and added a realistic _splat_ sound.

“Don’t do that. She hurts you, right? All the time? Hurts you a lot? Even though she’s your mom?”

Her words were simple, but were wrapped around something very big he could tell she was struggling with.

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Yeah, Little Miss Sunshine, I’m used to it.”

“But if she’s so mad, it’ll be worse this time.”

“Let me worry about that.”

She narrowed her eyes, and he worried he was going to have to drop kick her to safety, or something. “Can I have some Zagnuts for the road?”

He couldn’t figure that one out. But he was happy to hand over an armload of candy bars from the depths of his jacket.

“I’ll see you later,” she said.

“Lydia…”

“I’ll _see_ you _later_.”

She turned, and ran into the dark of the Abyss. It only took a few steps for her to disappear.

“ _BEETLEJUICE_.”

He turned, his stomach filling with dread. Juno was still on fire. Her beehive was blackened and losing structure. Her walker had sunk into her forearms. It was either melting, or she was so angry she was forgetting to keep it a separate part of her body.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. The words came out more quietly than he intended.

She huffed, and it sounded like a growl.

“I’ve been patient. For hundreds of years, I’ve been patient. But you’ve disappointed me at every turn. You’ve never even tried to live up to your potential. Don’t you know the kind of purpose you could have had? What you could have achieved if you weren’t such a lazy, boneheaded, waste of space? You said the breather was your friend.” She drew closer to him. The walker scraped across the ground. “What kind of demon is friends with a little girl? More than that, what do you think you’ve ever done to make anyone be friends with you?”

She took another step.

“Stay away!” he said. “I don’t care what you say! I’m through with you, Mom! I’m getting out of hell, and I’m not letting you hurt anybody I care about!”

How he was going to keep that promise, he didn’t know. He told himself it was the thought that counted.

“ _Oh, sonny boy. We’ll just see about that…!_ ”

His mother started to change. She must have liked looking old, and gross. It wasn’t what he would have chosen if he had total control over his appearance, but hey. Demons’ true forms were strange and primordial, and rare sights. Juno wasn’t reverting to her true form, but she was becoming something else.

Juno stretched and warped, until her walker became the front four legs of the giant insect demon she was at heart. Loose red clothing hardened into a carapace. Her face was broken by mandibles that slid from her mouth. The smell of fire remained.

Exit stage left.

He turned and ran through the Abyss, fueled by desperation to get out, get out, get out. He scrambled over the uneven ground, hoping he was doing more than just going deeper into the black. Juno followed him. He heard her mandibles clicking, over the sound of her limbs shredding the rocks beneath her.

And over that, he heard her laughing.

“Come on…come on, universe!” he groaned. “Help a guy out!”

He ran up a short rise in the ground, jumped off the edge –

– and tumbled onto the sands of Jupiter.

“Yes!” he whooped.

The sand three feet to his right exploded as it was raked by a spiked, armored leg. Someone – definitely _not_ him – let out a high-pitched shriek.

He started running again, flying over the dunes and kicking up sand like the Roadrunner. He didn’t look back, but he didn’t know where exactly would be a good place to go, either. Juno could follow him through Saturn. She could follow him into the living world. He pressed forward toward the admin area, knowing Juno would be right behind him. His only hope was that she wouldn’t want to disembowel him in front of her employees.

Who was he kidding? That would be gravy for her.

Sand gave way to black rock. He skidded to a stop in the craggy field, because where else was there to go?

He glanced behind him. He’d put a little distance between himself and Juno, but her jagged silhouette advanced on the horizon.

The swift clack of heels. “What have you done?!” Miss Argentina asked. She had a tight grip on her clipboard, and her face was so livid it almost wasn’t green.

“I set her on fire, a little bit,” he said.

Her hands shook, and her clipboard snapped in half.

“Where is the living girl?” Miss Argentina said.

“Hiding. She’s fine for now; Juno’s focused on me.”

“Well that’s something! What exactly is your mother going to do?”

“I think this is it, Miss A.”

“Beetlejuice…”

He cleared his throat and yanked on his tie. “Ah, you know, at least I get the honor dying horribly twice…”

Miss Argentina squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “There must be something you can do.”

He shrugged. He was powerful, and had more tricks up his striped sleeves than any other ghosts. He was nothing compared to his mother.

A door formed in the air, and swung open. Charles, Delia, and the Maitlands tripped over each other rushing out.

“Finally!” Adam exclaimed. “We opened so many doors!”

“There you are!” Charles said. “Where is Lydia?!”

“She’s as safe as she can be,” he said. “Right now, you need to get the hell out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

“Not without Lydia!” Delia said.

“It might _literally_ _be_ your funeral.”

“ _More breathers?_ ” came Juno’s roar. He looked up. She’d grown taller, her skin stretched tight in some places, bunched up in others. Her eyes were bulging and multifaceted, like a housefly’s. Her fried beehive still bobbed on top of her head.

“Help me or scram!” he said to the ghosts and the living.

The Maitlands looked at each other. Charles and Delia just looked terrified. Miss Argentina’s eyes darted from left to right, but she didn’t move.

“C’mon, Ma!” he yelled at the creature towering over them. “Let’s have it out, you and me! For better – or worse.”

Definitely worse! What was he thinking? What was he _doing_?

He had no other options. No more cowering. No more tricks. No more running away.

He strained, and spikes erupted from his body. Juno’s pincer tried to clench around him, but she couldn’t grab hold. He puffed himself up even bigger, and her limb jerked back.

He kept moving. He retracted the spikes, stretched his body like a snake, coiled, sprang, and wrapped himself around his mother’s neck. She choked, and her head jerked back. It was just a holdup, though. She grabbed him, yanked him off her. He found himself being dangled in front of her face.

“ _I never should have borne you!_ ” she hissed, as he wilted into his human shape. “ _I should have scrubbed you from the afterlife the second you crossed over!_ ”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a chunk of rock flew over his head and hit Juno on the chin.

“That is no way to talk to your child!” said Barbara Maitland.

She and Adam were on the sidelines, but holding rocks. Barbara was still a little off balance after throwing hers. They thought they could help. Oh God, they were so adorable that he wanted to die again…

He twisted so he dropped out of Juno’s grasp. As soon as he hit the ground, he rolled to the side, and popped up covered in arms that ended with claws. He could only raise all those limbs for a few seconds, however, before they disappeared, leaving him with his usual two arms and two legs. Boring. And weak.

His default form kept threatening to return, like a resistance band threatening to snap back and hit someone in the eye. Unlike full demons, who could look like any horrifying thing they set their minds to, he had a semi-human form he had to settle back into after a while. Sure, he’d _warped_ over the years; he hadn’t been _born_ with green hair, but this was pushing him to the jagged edge of his limits.

One of Juno’s six legs smashed into him. He let his body get rubbery, so instead of being crushed, he just kind of…squished.

She hit him again. And again.

“Beetlejuice!” Miss Argentina yelled.

He tried to make a joke, because the idea of Miss A being worried about him was just plain disconcerting. But it was hard to say _This is karma for every time I drunkenly broke a Whack-a-Mole machine_ when your lungs wouldn’t inflate.

He was trying. He really was. But he just couldn’t resist anymore.

Juno pinned him to the ground. A little more pressure and he’d be squashed like a bug. Fitting, he supposed.

“Leave them alone!” came a familiar girl’s voice.

He looked up, and saw a sandworm bearing down on them. For a second, he braced himself to be devoured. Until he recognized the dark shape clinging to the sandworm’s back. And he realized Juno was about to be distracted.

“Hi, Lydia!” he shouted, and slithered away as the sandworm reared back over his mother.

“ _No!_ ” Juno roared. “Get away, you filthy –”

A Zagnut hit her between the compound eyes.

“Go, Sandy!” Lydia called. “Get the snack!”

The sandworm lunged forward, all jaws snapping. The vision of black and white stripes turned into a shadow that threw up a wall of dirt. He heard Lydia shriek, and Juno yell in anger.

And then Juno went silent.

The dust settled.

The sandworm was curling itself up into a satisfied ball. Lydia was safe on its back, but was quietly whispering “ _oh my God oh my God oh my God_ ” to herself. Juno was nowhere in sight.

Miss Argentina took a hesitant step toward the torn patch of earth where the Director of Netherworld Customs and Processing had been devoured. The sandworm nipped at her experimentally, and she scampered back.

“Yeah,” he wheezed. “The ghosts need to stay away from the worm.”

Charles and Delia went to help Lydia down. They didn’t seem thrilled about getting close to the sandworm, but it ignored them completely. He didn’t blame it for not getting overexcited. It was going to have quite a time digesting a meal like Juno, given that demons weren’t sandworms’ usual diet. In fact, it probably wasn’t even really all that interested in the nearby ghosts.

Not that he wanted to stand up and check. Or stand up. Or move at all. His body – his whole _existence_ – felt beaten to a pulp.

“Are you alright?” Barbara Maitland asked, leaning over him.

“I will be if you kiss it better,” he said.

She sighed. “You’d have to shower about a hundred times for me to even picture that happening.”

“Anything for you and sexy over there. Let’s run some hot water and get the ball rolling.”

She pursed her lips.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he groaned. That word again. Bleeeeech. “Would you please help me up, Barbara?”

“That’s better.” She took his hand, and pulled him to his feet.

“Beetlejuice!” Lydia ran over to him. “Are you OK?”

“Never better!” He grabbed her, tossed her into the air, and caught her while she giggled. “Look at you! You saved the day!

“I can’t believe it worked,” she said.

“Me neither!” He set her down. “Chekov’s Zagnuts. Whodathunkit?”

“Hey, um…” Lydia’s expression grew concerned. “Who are they?”

He looked over his shoulder. A motley assortment of nightmares had wandered out of the admin area. Little gremlin creatures with skeletal faces and bulging eyes. A chalk-pale man wearing a suit, and smiling with a mouth like a stretched rubber band. A woman in Victorian garb who had the strong smell of potpie.

“Oh, them? They’re demons,” he said.

“Cool,” Lydia said.

“Lydia.” Charles had snuck up on them. “I need to talk to you.”

Her smile was gone. “Things didn’t go as planned, with…with Mom,” she said.

“I didn’t think so,” he said quietly. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s talk over there. Away from…” His gaze slid over the demon audience. “…All _that_.”

Charles led Lydia away.

He checked a strand of his hair, and saw that the green was fading to a vague and colorless shade with his exhaustion. Still, he revved up to stomp over and interrupt Charles, because he was in the mood to confront another terrible parent today.

Delia grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t,” she said quietly. “I think they need to figure this out by themselves.”

“He’s been an asshole.”

Delia patted his arm. “Maybe a little bit. But he loves Lydia very much. He’s going to make things as right as he can.” She was looking at Charles with misty, lovestruck eyes. Ew. “Thank you for looking after Lydia…in your own way. She’s a unique girl.”

“Ah, she saved _my_ sorry ass.”

“By the way…that giant insect creature was your _mother_?” Delia asked.

He nodded, and waited for the usual disgusted look, the double take, the silent curiosity about whether he was as twisted as Juno was.

“I’m very sorry. Growing up must have been awful,” was what Delia said instead.

“Um…yes,” he said.

“And you’ve been working for her for _how long_?”

“Ever since I died. It’s been a wonderful afterlife. Every time a bell rings, a demon bites the wings off a bat.”

Delia blinked a few times. “Have you ever considered therapy?”

He put a hand on each temple. “I don’t like having my head shrunk.” He squeezed until his skull was the size of an apple. Delia looked a little grossed out, and mildly impressed. He let his head reflate, and decided she was OK.

“Beetlejuice.” Lydia was done talking with her father. She wiped the corner of her eye, but she seemed fine. “So is Juno…dead?” she asked, pointing at the sandworm. The striped animal’s eyes were lowered drowsily. “Like, _dead_ dead?”

“Let me see,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Benchchartreuse. No, Bechdelgoose. _Beachcaboose, dammit_!” He shook his head. “She isn’t dead enough, apparently. I’d give her about a hundred years stewing in the sandworm before she pops out.”

Miss Argentina, drawing closer now that the sandworm had settled down, clicked her pen. “The Netherworld will be in very capable hands when or if she returns. Hands so capable, they may push her right back into the sandworm’s maw.”

“You’re the best, Miss A.”

“I know.” Miss A turned to the assembled demons. “Anyone want to argue about that? I think we can make do without a director for a while.”

“Hey, man, we aren’t gonna cry with Juno gone,” said a one-eyed skeleton in a bowler hat, his jaw rocking back and forth as he spoke. “She was the worst boss we ever had. And what she did to her own flesh and blood? Not cool.”

“We’ll get more done without her around. Don’t act like we haven’t all been thinking it,” said a mournful elephant in clown makeup.

“The capitalist paradigm of a manager overseeing a 40-hour work week is obsolete anyway,” said a moldering bride, and the maggot in her eye socket agreed.

“I would very much like to leave now,” Charles said.

“I have the chalk!” Barbara said.

“Wait!” Lydia ran in front of her father. “BJ comes with us,” she said, crossing her arms. “I already signed the adoption paperwork. And if you say he can’t, I’ll drop out of school and get a neck tattoo. So.”

Charles blinked hard, and looked to the Maitlands.

“It’s fair that you two get a say about this,” he said.

The Maitlands looked at each other for several seconds, and he started to get worried.

“No sexual harassment, or you can’t live with us anymore,” Adam said.

“And you take a bath the second you walk in the door!” Barbara added.

“And you can’t have your ghost or demon friends over.”

“At least, not without getting permission first.”

“And we’ll evict you the second you stop being a good influence on Lydia.”

“And if you ever, _ever_ hurt her at all, we will defy all afterlife laws, find a way to resurrect you, and murder you slowly and painfully.” The steel in Adam’s and Barbara’s eyes when Barbara said that made him certain that they meant it, and he was both terrified and, somehow, more deeply in love. Oh, he’d find a way to bring them around. Even if it meant having to do some really twisted, degrading stuff like being _nice_ , and giving _compliments_ , and remembering _birth days_. Time to learn some romantic ukulele songs.

“Agreed, agreed, I have no friends, agreed, and that’s fine by me,” he said, ticking off the points on his fingers.

“Then I guess we’re OK with it,” Adam said.

“On a trial basis,” Barbara said.

With a flourish, Barbara pulled the chalk out of her pocket. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to go home. It’s been a long, long day.”

“See ya later, guys!” he shouted at the spectators. Miss Argentina smiled at him, actually smiled in a full, genuine way that didn’t come off in the least bit sarcastic.

“Bye-bye, Sandy!” Lydia called, waving at the sandworm. It _thwacked_ the ground with its tail.

He gathered with Charles, Delia, Adam, and Lydia while Barbara drew three straight lines on a rock.

“I’m still mad at you for lying about my mom,” Lydia said.

“Eh, that’s fair.”

“But…” she said. Her tone was deliberate, as if she was about to say something important. “I guess you’re supposed to always be mad at your dumb big brother.”

He scrabbled for something to say, though that word had knocked the wind out of him.

“Dumb?” He straightened, and pressed a hand to his chest, affronted. “I’ll remind you, I’m the brains of this outfit.” He reached into his right ear, and pulled out said brain. Lydia laughed.

“ _Brother_?” he mouthed to himself when her back was turned. Barbara saw him, and gave him a small smile before she walked through the door herself.

Lydia cleared her throat. “And once we’re all through, I’ll say your name two times. It was two times, right? Two times exactly, and then if nothing happens, I should just give up and assume you don’t want to come?”

His unbeating heart burst with pride. “You little shit.”

“Come on,” she insisted, holding out her hand. “Let’s go home.”

He took it, and she yanked him through. And through the shadows and green mist, he was pretty sure he could see daylight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaah!!! Thank you so so so so much for reading "Don't Go to the Netherworld!" all the way to the end. This was fantastic fun! Every single kudos and comment made me smile.
> 
> And whether you're reading this right after the update or you've stumbled across this fic sometime in the future, feel free to comment, and I'll almost certainly reply.
> 
> Thanks again!


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